Knit Bits: A Look at a Fashion Design Pro, Stylecraft Seeks yarn Line Input and How to Be a Good Knitting Student

The New York Times recently ran an interesting profile of Vladimir Teriokhin, a former ballet dancer in Russia turned sought-after high-fashion knitwear designer. He makes sweaters for the likes of Oscra de la Renta and Marc Jacobs, as well as his own line, called Spencer Vladamir, which retails for $800 to $2,500 per garment at Barneys. Gwyneth Paltrow has called him the Sweater Whisperer, and he’s known for using chunky yarns and large-scale designs with lots of cables.

British yarn manufacturer Stylecraft Yarns is looking for help picking colors for the expansion of a couple of its yarn lines. The company has more than 80 shades in its Special DK weight yarn line, and it wants to add some of the colors in Aran and DK weights, with the help of fans. They’re taking nominations for favorite yarn colors through the end of February, at which point the 12 favorites will be announced. Then voting will take place to determine the six favorites that will become new colors in both lines (check Facebook for more details). Voting will run through the end of March and the new colors are expected to be released in October.

Red Heart has a new free collection of 10 knit and crochet patterns for the little ballet dancer in your life. From little sweaters to leg warmers and bun covers, there’s lots of cute stuff here.

CouponBox recently did a survey in which they asked people about the indoor hobbies they most wanted to try in 2016, and knitting ranked number one, with 16 percent of the 3,500 Americans surveyed saying they’d like to give the hobby a try. Second place was rock climbing, followed by reading, yoga and soccer, which I didn’t realize was an indoor hobby, but still. Hooray for new knitters! (Click the link for the full range of responses.)

Finally, Franklin Habit has been a popular knitting teacher for years, and before that he was a student, so he has lots of thoughts about how those of us who enjoy taking classes, whether at a festival, conference or our local yarn shop, can be better knitting students. I won’t give you the whole story (and this is only part one, focusing on what to do before class), but it amounts to knowing what you’re getting into and bringing what you actually need for the class, including any homework the teacher asked you to do. Seems simple enough, right?

[Photo via CouponBox.]

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Why should the fireplace get all the fun? Instead of knitting stockings this year, why not whip up a pair of Christmas themed socks? These Christmas sock knitting patterns are lots of fun to make and you can wear them to holiday gatherings for years to come.

For our friends in the southern part of the world, there are the Christmas in July socks from the Kiwi Lodge – Kylie (Ravelry link). These shorty socks are covered in Christmas trees and have bright pink heels and toes for a tropical feel. There’s also an option to make a longer sock if you celebrate somewhere it’s colder.

Twin Stitches Designs (Ravelry) has a fun pattern with mix and match colorwork motifs you can use to build your own cozy Christmas socks. From the sample socks I see Christmas puddings, trucks hauling trees, Santa belts, ornaments and a couple of different borders. There may be more patterns included but the listing doesn’t say. Make a pair that matches or use different motifs on each foot for extra holiday cheer.

If you want to stick to Christmas puddings on your holiday socks, check out this cute pattern from Stone Knits. These lovely socks feature a band of puddings around the leg and a bit of holly by the toes.

These vintage holiday light socks from Grey Owl Knits by Sarah are classic looking and lots of fun at the same time. I love this color combination but of course you can make your lights and stripes whatever colors you like or have on hand. They’re worked using stranded knitting.

And if you’d like even more of a mix of patterns for your socks, try Barbara Ceglédi’s Christmas Chaos socks, a free pattern on Ravelry. The pattern includes 25 little motifs you can choose from, ranging from snowflakes and Christmas trees to elf hats, reindeer and hearts.

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